Troops on streets on eve of election

Heavy movements of troops and armoured vehicles were reported on the streets of Harare tonight on the eve of presidential elections branded a fraud and with few betting on Robert Mugabe allowing himself to be beaten.

Heavy movements of troops and armoured vehicles were reported on the streets of Harare tonight on the eve of presidential elections branded a fraud and with few betting on Robert Mugabe allowing himself to be beaten.

Voting takes place tomorrow and Sunday with counting starting on Monday.

The election is the biggest challenge to Mugabe, 78, since he led Zimbabwe to independence in 1980.

His opponent, former union leader Morgan Tsvangirai, would almost certainly win if the election was free and fair but Mugabe has used every legal, and illegal, trick in an bid to cling onto power in a nation reduced to near poverty

A Mugabe victory would leave his nation totally isolated and perhaps split the Commonwealth apart if a consensus on expelling Zimbabwe was not reached.

But observers feel Tsvangirai needs a massive landslide victory to overcome the gerrymandering, intimidation and ballot rigging aimed at keeping Mugabe in power.

Mugabe has promised a host of public works initiatives if he is re-elected and he has pledged to continue with his controversial programme of seizing white-owned farms and giving them to landless blacks.

Campaigning under the slogan Do not betray your heritage, Mugabe has called Tsvangirai a servant to white interests and Western powers who want to see the country fail.

At an election rally in Bindura, about 162 miles north of Harare, Mugabe today mocked the opposition party, calling it instead of the Movement for Democratic Change, "the Members of Death Corporation."

"It will be buried. We will deal with their ghost," Mugabe told the rally of 10,000 supporters.

Campaigning under the slogan Change, Tsvangirai, 49, is promising to revive the economy, end corruption and promote a more orderly land reform system.

"This has been a very hard and long struggle," Tsvangirai told screaming supporters at a campaign stop today in an industrial area of Harare.

He urged them to vote despite the "intimidation on a massive scale."

"Don't be accomplices to fear," he said.

Human rights groups and many political analysts say the election already is too tainted to be free and fair.

The violence is rampant throughout the country, police have cancelled scores of opposition rallies and Mugabe has used his presidential powers to restore controversial election laws struck down by the Supreme Court that appear to make it easier to rig the vote.

Tonight, the opposition said the state was delaying the accreditation of up to 15,000 polling agents representing Movement for Democratic Change just hours before voting was scheduled to begin.

Opposition officials also said one of its MPs and several of its polling agents were assaulted by uniformed troops in eastern Zimbabwe today.

Two weeks ago, Tsvangirai was charged with treason in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate Mugabe.

In newspaper advertisements, the ruling party calls the election a choice between "Plots to Kill" and "Plots to Till."

Stephen Bongozozo stood in a queue of hundreds of people today waiting for corn meal and pleading for help in feeding his starving family.

His country's economy has crashed. Hundreds of thousands of people are hungry. And political violence is rampant across the land. But when he is asked about the election, he grows quiet.

Many are terrified to express an opinion about the most competitive elections in the nation's history.

Over the past two years, more than 150 people have been killed, thousands tortured and 70,000 made homeless by political violence mainly caused by ruling party militants, according to the Human Rights Forum, a consortium of local human rights groups.

In what appears to be a show of government force, witnesses in Harare reported unusually heavy movements of soldiers and military vehicles, including armoured cars around the capital.

The nation's few pre-election polls reveal more about the nation's fear than about whether Mugabe or Tsvangirai will win.

Nearly 70% of respondents in one poll refused to say who they would vote for.

In a market in the poor Glen Norah neighbourhood of the capital, Harare, people spoke today of ruling party militants living in a nearby camp who invade the neighbourhood every evening, drag off opposition supporters and torture them throughout the night.

"The electorate is totally intimidated," said Munyaradzi Bidi, the director of Zim Rights, a local human rights group.

Jim Zonda, a 75-year-old Mugabe supporter in Harare, said the country's dire economic crisis will get better once the election gets under way and Mugabe is re-elected.

"Starting from tomorrow, everything will be alright," he said.

But many opposition supporters in Harare who were too frightened to give their names wondered why Mugabe was only going to fix the country after the election.

"The government is failing," said a man waiting near the food line who refused to give his name.

"There is no order in Zimbabwe," another man yelled as he walked away from the food line.

Joseph Mahutu, an unemployed 23-year-old, said he hopes the opposition can bring real change to the country and end the violence and economic destruction.